Existentialism
Defined as: philosophy that maintains
that existence precedes essence;
concerned with humanity’s perpetual,
anguished struggle to exist.
PRESUMPTIONS:
• Individuals have free will; they are entirely
responsible for their own actions.
• There is no predestination (no deterministic
systems, such as fate).
• Individuals freely construct and use their own
value systems.
• They form their own sense of being and
creating meaning in the process of the above.
Presumptions (Cont.)
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Rejection of value
systems, and rules.
The individual is the
“engine of change.”
Risks: despair,
hopelessness, and
nihilism.
Kierkegaard and Marcel
vs.. Heidegger and
Sartre.
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E. since WWII:
Theological Theorists:
Christian Existentialists
believe that true freedom
may be found in God.
Atheistic Existentialists
believe that individuals
exercise their free will to
make themselves; they
engage in the social sphere,
such as the political struggle
against institutions, laws,
and conventions.
Existentialist Theory: Atheists
• Stress the loneliness and despair; the
alienation that is essential and inescapable.
• Uncertainty.
• Focus on the essential meaninglessness of
the universe and man’s struggle to CREATE
meaning.
More on Existentialism
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No Divine Absolutes--define yourself.
{Grendel speaks from Sartre’s POV}
NO rational reason for being; human life is
futile passion; we must sculpt our own
meaning; no moral law--all lead to dread and
anxiety.
The dragon=the divine absolute.
In religion we are given an “essence.”
Grendel
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An important tool for
amplification and
insight into the story
and characters in
Beowulf.
Its tone is dark and
pessimistic; however,
the ultimate goal is to
discover how Grendel is
wrong: the world is not
meaningless!
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Grendel: he tells his
story from his point of
view;
He is at time vicious,
pathetic, comic and
insightful.
He forces us to
examine human
civilization.
Quotations to Look For:
• “I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone
exist… I create the whole universe blink by
blink.---An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree!”
• “You stimulate them! You make them think and
scheme. You drive them to poetry, science,
religion, all that makes them what hey are for as
long as they last.”
Quotations:
• “As you see it is, while the seeing lasts, dark
nightmare history, time as coffin; but where
the water was rigid there will be fish, and men
will survive on their flesh till spring. It’s
coming, my brother, whether you believe it or
not…By that I kill you.”
Symbolism
• Monsters as
Symbols: they are
symbols of fears,
dangers, and evils
which any society
that seeks to
SURVIVE must
face.
• Monsters are in:
• Folklore, myth, gothic
works, science fiction,
comics, and horror
movies.
• Need of the human
psyche to face and
defeat these symbols of
fear.
• The monster must be
destroyed.
GARDNER: Style and
Purpose
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GRENDEL: less of the heroic ideal.
Use of his eclectic style enlivens his poetic prose;
Mixture of poetry, allusion, myth and “black humor;”
Tone of “despairing nihilism;”
Kennings
Use of the number twelve (12)!
Theme of Pessimism--– (irony, heroic illusion, hypocrisy…)
 No “heroic perfection.”
 Hrothgar and his men struggle with a lifestyle that demands
fighting and bloodshed;
– Their religion provides no answers.
GARDNER
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GRENDEL: less of the heroic ideal.
No “heroic perfection.”
Hrothgar and his men struggle with a
lifestyle that demands fighting and
bloodshed;
Their religion provides no answers.
STRUCTURE
· Twelve Chapters.
· Five are “story.”
· Seven are
“flashbacks.
· Flashbacks establish
character, history and
reasons for the feud.
· Non-linear chronology.
Flashbacks enable
Grendel to understand
his motives.
· First person POV
shows Grendel trying
to make sense of his
behavior;
· This reads like a
confessional--yet
Grendel denies
himself “absolution,”
· At the end, he still
believes that
everything is accident;
nothing matters.
More on Structure:
Interior monologue:
 Grendel is a monster, but shares
intelligence, language, and the search for
meaning with the humans in the novel.
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